North to Matsumae: Australian Whalers to Japan retraces the perilous voyages of two nineteenth-century Australian whaling ships as they harvest whales off the Japanese coast. Drawing on previously unpublished journals of the Lady Rowena’s ship master and supplemented by Japanese historical accounts, this well-researched account provides a historical context to the current whaling debate. The book also charts an unexplored chapter in Australian-Japanese relations, documenting the first known contact between the two countries on Japanese soil in 1831.